


Let Me Build My Heart Some Armor

by AngeNoir



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Fluff and Hurt/Comfort, Hurt/Comfort, Injury Recovery, Light Angst, M/M, Worry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-20
Updated: 2014-09-20
Packaged: 2018-02-18 03:29:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,614
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2333630
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AngeNoir/pseuds/AngeNoir
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tony's not good about caring for sick people. He knows that, knows it's a lifelong trend no matter the effort he expended to fixing that in himself.</p><p>The solution? Fixing the other half of the equation.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Let Me Build My Heart Some Armor

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lasairfhiona](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lasairfhiona/gifts).



Tony hovered outside the door of their shared floor, nervous and unsure. He wasn’t a caretaker by any stretch of the imagination. Pepper had had the patience of the saint but even she couldn’t handle the way he dealt with her and their relationship. He wasn’t invested enough, he expected her to make more time for him than he did for her, and he was difficult enough without accounting for his odd eccentricities that he tried and failed to rein in.

“Standing outside is not going to help,” he muttered, fingers tightening on the tray he had in his hands. Taking a deep breath, he shifted his weight and opened the door.

The penthouse apartment was built in an elegant L-shape, the entry hall leading to a long area of open space that was filled with sleek lines, low walls, and wide open windows. At the very end of the space were the closed-off rooms: the bedroom, the office, and the library. In the bedroom lay his wounded lover, and if Tony could just figure out how to adequately help without overwhelming or hurting more than helping…

“I can do this,” he muttered, and in the privacy of his rooms, JARVIS replied with a quiet, “Of course sir,” that didn’t even sound sarcastic, really.

The apartment was actually very rarely lived in, even though Tony had gone out of his way to make it inviting and comforting. Instead of allowing generic decorators to come through, he’d actually taken the time to look at catalogs, envision what he wanted if he were ever to settle down enough to live inside the walls of these rooms. He hoped his lover was as pleased with the choices as Tony was, but since his lover rarely voiced any particular preference for physical items at all, it was more of a hit or miss, and Tony was worried he was missing more than he was ever hitting.

In the bedroom, Phil looked up from the book he was reading, the covers pulled up halfway over him and his painkillers lined up on the night stand. His face pulled into a mildly disapproving expression and he said dryly, “Which army are you feeding with that?”

Tony looked down at the tray, suddenly indecisive. He’d gotten a little of everything, hoping at some point he’d have hit on something Phil wanted to eat that was also good to eat (yes, he knew about Phil’s addiction to packaged baked goods that had little to no real energy and bad gas station coffee; he just disagreed with that kind of lifestyle). There was fresh fruit, pancakes, waffles, oatmeal, sausage, mounds of bacon, biscuits, milk, coffee, orange juice, and some yogurt and a whole omelet to one side. “My one-man army?” he asked, winking at Phil.

Phil snickered and pulled a bookmark – an honest-to-god bookmark that had a quotation from some famous author somewhere – out to place inside his book. “I don’t need that much food, Anthony. I’m actually really not that hungry.”

“Yeah, well, you have a broken leg and thirteen stitches in your scalp,” Tony replied, setting the tray on the nightstand and shifting the book and painkillers around to make it more accessible. “Besides, I forgot to feed you last night.”

“I’m not a puppy you need to feed,” Phil said pointedly. “JARVIS was more than happy to have Natasha bring up a tray of food.”

“ _I’m_ supposed to bring the food,” Tony remarked petulantly.

At that, Phil paused, one hand hovering over picking up the coffee. “Are you… jealous?”

Tony rolled his shoulders and moved to the closet. “Not – really,” he said finally. “No. I’m not. I’m just… I don’t want you to go out into the field anymore. You nearly died.”

“You nearly died just last week,” Phil replied tartly. “That’s part of the job occupation.”

“You shouldn’t have to do that stuff anymore!” Tony said heatedly. “SHIELD has other agents. Nick doesn’t go out into the field anymore, does he?”

Tony watched out of the corner of his eye as Phil leaned back from the food, brow furrowed. “He actually does, sometimes, though admittedly not as much as he would like anymore, because he’s too bogged down with paperwork. As third in command at SHIELD and no longer in charge of Agent Barton and Romanoff, I have lighter duties than I would otherwise.”

“You still got hurt,” Tony said, and it was a constant, recurring nightmare – remembering Phil’s death, finding out Phil was alive, and then worrying that Phil would die again at any moment. “Not only that, but you got hurt in a way that we could prevent. Preventable danger. That’s it.”

“You could prevent any damage happening to you, too,” Phil said quietly. “Just quit being an Avenger. You think my heart wasn’t in my throat when I saw what the armor looked like after your latest interaction with Doom? Worry goes both ways.”

That was the perfect segue into the topic Tony really wanted to say – and the reason Tony had forgotten to come up here last night, sequestered as he had been in his workshop. “But I’m in _armor_ ,” he said, voice forceful as he stared into the closet. “I have some level of protection. You don’t.”

Phil’s face had moved from mildly annoyed to irritated, and Tony was fucking this up but he needed, he _needed_ , to do this. It wasn’t even spur of the moment; Phil had been hurt before (though never this badly, never shattered a body part while with Tony as bad as he had currently shattered his leg) and Tony had put together concepts, ideas, slowly pulling together pieces of a whole that he completed last night in a frenzied state.

“Anthony Stark, we agreed we would be professional about this,” Phil said disapprovingly. “You have your job, and I have mine, and we understand the demands of time on us – I don’t complain when you’re rarely here, when you’re surrounded by danger constantly, when you stay abnormally long hours in the workshop—”

“You do complain about the workshop, though—” Tony began, reeling a little from the list of faults.

Phil continued as if he hadn’t been interrupted. “—and you don’t get to dictate what I do and don’t do at my job. I am the Avengers liaison, I have a team I need to supervise, and I help keep SHIELD running smoothly. I deal with paperwork, I deal with children, and I deal with adrenaline-addicts who constantly drive me into a state of panic. _Constantly_.”

Before Tony could think of something better to say, he was asking, “Which group is the children and which one are the addicts? Because frankly your team is _so_ juvenile I cannot believe them but yesterday Thor and Steve did get into a wrestling match in the living room over whether Steve had cheated at Mario Kart or not.”

Phil let out a displeased hiss from between clenched teeth.

“Look, that’s not – I made you armor,” Tony said desperately.

Phil’s instant look of rejection and irritation had Tony tripping over his words. “No, it’s a good idea, and it’s not hi-tech, not like mine, hell, I didn’t even do with it as much as I did with Rhodey’s, but you – you need protection, Phil. I need – you need protection. You’re one man and you’re amazing and I love you but I can’t – I suck at taking care of you when you’re hurt. I do, look at me, I’m a disaster—”

“You’re perfect, Tony,” Phil interrupted, grinding Tony’s babble to a halt. “You’re absolutely perfect. You’re not doing anything wrong, besides perhaps bringing me too much food—”

“I didn’t even _bring_ you anything yesterday! If Natasha hadn’t remembered—”

Phil ruthlessly used his authoritative voice to say, “Tony.”

Tony fell silent, still standing in front of the closet with his tank off and hands hooked into the waistband of his pants.

“Tony,” Phil repeated, voice gentle. “I’m happy with you and your care. You’re not shorting me electronically in any way. Hell, my team has never been half as effective as they are now, with the weapons and technology you’ve given us. But I don’t need armor. I really don’t. I thank you for the thought, but I am as effective as I am because I know the methods I use and I’m good with them.”

“You’re afraid of new tech,” Tony said weakly.

“I am not,” Phil replied, voice amused, and Tony turned around to see that Phil’s eyes were crinkled, _fond_ , and warm. “You can show it to me when I’m up and about again, but initially? Right now, knowing how you’re feeling and knowing what your armor is like? No, Tony. I love you, dearly, but I will get hurt. You’ll get hurt, too, as much as it pains me, and as much as my heart tells me you’re a civilian even though my head knows you’re more than capable of handling it.”

Tony felt he should be insulted, but Phil was patting the bed at his side and Tony shucked off his pants and socks to pad over to where Phil wanted him.

“We love each other, and we’ll always be worried about each other. Always.”

“That sounds horrible,” Tony mumbled, crawling on top of the bed.

Phil laughed, curling an arm around Tony’s shoulders and carding fingers through Tony’s hair. “It sounds wonderful,” he replied.

And Tony wasn’t as young as he once was, to be able to keep on going after an engineering frenzy, and sleep dragged at his mouth as he breathed out a long sigh and whispered, “Yeah, I guess you’re right.”

“I always am,” Phil replied.


End file.
